


Half-Told Stories

by Thimblerig



Series: The Lion and the Serpent [29]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Ambiguity, Aramis' life is unending misery, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Implied Relationships, Messy messy feelings, On the dark side, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-24 18:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 12,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7518673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Recollection isn't always kind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "There was a woman..."

**Author's Note:**

> Really not sure how to warn for this because, while nothing is particularly graphic, I'm going for ambiguous and a bit distressing. Aramis' head is not a particularly happy place. 
> 
> This is set near the end of "Kindness to Strangers" and involves that story's massive spoiler.
> 
> More detailed notes at the end, for if you don't like surprises.

"There was a woman," said Aramis, and took another long pull from the bottle.

"Do I know this woman?" asked Porthos as he set down the black iron poker by the grate. The coals glowed, gold and vermillion, fading to blue-bleak ash. Aramis shrugged.

"Hair like tangerines; skin like clotted cream."  His free hand gestured, tracing the curves of a voluptuous woman, and flicking crows'-feet at the eyes. He shut his eyes briefly, and added, "spring sunlight in the room, it looked like, and there was a red steeple visible through the window. A smell of baking bread."

"Mighta been Vaugirard," answered Porthos. "Other than that I got no clue."  Adele Basset had been a ginger, true, but built skinny, and she never showed a wrinkle in her life.

Aramis hummed. "Skin like clotted cream," he repeated, "and bruises on it like berries, like apples."  He looked at Porthos sidelong, through his lashes.

Porthos set a chunk of wood on the coals and sat back. "And then what?" he asked. A drop of resin flared into light.

"She was laughing at me, called me a fool. I think I'd asked her something?  Offered?"  Aramis set down the bottle and looked at both his hands, spreading the fingers wide. "My hands were not sore," he said clearly. "That's something."

Porthos picked up the bottle and took a slug of wine. "You had a lot of affairs," he said, "an' you were discreet in most. You never told me this story."

"And that's come back to bite me, no?"  Aramis stared into the fire. "And when I lacked discretion?"

Porthos knuckled his forehead. "I'm too drunk for that. Not drunk enough. Something."

Aramis looked for another bottle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: There's a glimpse of what might be either abuse or the result of consensual BDSM; it's written to be unclear to the viewpoint character.
> 
> Odds of Aramis having stumbled upon something like this in his long and storied libertinage... high. 
> 
> I borrowed some imagery from the end of "The Windhover" by G M Hopkins because why the hell not.


	2. "Nothing to the purpose."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW at the bottom for if you don't like surprises.

“... and then a fourth dog came through the door eying me like an errant sheep, I backed away, a fifth crawled from under the bed with the missing sock on its head, they all started to bark...”

Porthos howled with laughter, slapping the floor with his hand. “Madame Marchand, without a doubt. She ate Musketeers for supper and fed their gizzards to her animals in the morning.”

“Not literally, I hope,” said Aramis, disconcerted.

“Well, there _was_ the Chevalier d’Bracieux who disappeared that time an’ we wondered a bit… What did you do next?”

“As any gentleman of dignity and decorum might,” said Aramis, “I leapt out the window. Presumably I landed safely. Is she well?”

“Auditioning lover number five, last I heard.” Aramis nodded and his shoulders eased slightly. He tipped back his head, taking another pull from the bottle. Porthos scratched an itch under his chin and the heavy gold ring on his little finger caught a drop of firelight. Aramis glanced at it, then frowned.

“A black ring...” he said thoughtfully, “cabochon, onyx, I think, good setting.” He put down the bottle and rubbed his cheekbone absently with the thumb. “A man with hair like damp straw; voice like a snake working through the grass. Recent wound to the eye: the cut under the eyepatch was still healing.”

“Rochefort.” Porthos was unable to keep the growl out of his voice. He felt Aramis sling a companionable arm over his shoulders. “Where was this?”

He saw Aramis’ eyes crinkle, not exactly looking at the fire. “Stone walls. High window.” He shook his arm as if jingling chains. “A cell.”

“What did... what did you two talk about?”

“We didn't.”  

“What were you doing, then?”

Aramis’ eyes moved back and forth, reading the scene. Finally he said, “Nothing to the purpose.” He lifted his free hand so that the sleeve cuff slid down, and examined fine white scars at the base of his hand. “Hm.” He turned inquisitive eyes to Porthos. “Who is he?”

“He's dead.”

Aramis waited, face curious.

“What did he do?”

Aramis shook his head slightly. “I gather he did not like me; the details don't signify.” He winced, eyes distant, and added, “Ugh, that’s just awful. So much black lace on the shirt - and the layers of necklaces… Porthos, clearly the man was deranged. Who was he?”

“... Athos could tell you.”

Silence, then the hand on Porthos’ shoulder squeezed lightly. “So.”

Aramis picked up the bottle again and offered it to Porthos. “Did the Captain really barricade himself inside an inn cellar for a week?”

Porthos breathed out. “Week’n a half. Athos was having a bad summer, and then things got a mite complicated...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Implied ill-treatment of a prisoner. The odds of Rochefort getting in a few hits to someone he held captive for days... high. However, Aramis walked out under his own power, that's good, yeah?
> 
> I borrowed the cellar anecdote from the book!verse.


	3. “You truly don't remember this at all?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References events in 1.07 and 1.04

“... And that, Porthos, is why de Larroque confessed herself to death without guilt, without torture, without even a harsh word. She loved those girls, or at least, felt responsible for them. Since the lady cannot speak for herself, the story ends there.” Aramis rubbed his eyes. “Hell of a thing.”

“You truly don't remember this at all?”

Aramis shook his head. “I barely know this version - it isn't Madame's favourite story, you understand?” He raked fingers through his hair. “I dislike, I truly dislike, that I can follow the Cardinal's reasoning - send de Larroque to the pyre like Galigaï, buy shipyards with her ashes, and build a wooden wall around France. The reasoning is loathsome, but I can follow it.”

“Ninon ain't dead,” said Porthos, gleefully sly.

“Excuse me, what?”

“Athos begged for her life,” Porthos paused, eyes soft. “That was something to see. And the Cardinal was in a peculiar mood and let us fake her death. He still got most of her money out of the deal, but…”

“But it's something,” said Aramis, his lips blossoming in a delighted smile. He lifted the bottle, near empty, and said, “To miracles of resurrection.”    

“Yeah,” said Porthos, grinning. He nudged Aramis with his shoulder. “But Milady was in that business up to her neck, why wouldn't she know the true ending?”

“Leverage, I imagine,” Aramis said, his grin falling away. “She and her grey gentleman did not always get on. But if you can convince someone they have sinned at your behest, a piece of their soul belongs not to God but to you thereafter. Loathsome, but practical.”

His voice drifted and his eyelids slid half shut. “Once there was a soldier, faithful and strong, but he was ungovernable. He did not understand the games of Court, and was destined to break them or be eaten up.” He drew his knees up and rested his forearms on them, adding, dreamily, “One day, near the end of the Lenten fast, he was taken to a colonnade of the palace and as the snow fell outside the pillars they walked and the exigencies of a certain situation were made clear to him. And when he was convinced he agreed to - to -” Aramis’ mouth worked. “Sorry, I've lost the rest of that story. Something about a forlorn hope? Lost children?”

Porthos had drunk enough wine to make even himself sleepy and the words drifted. Who was the soldier in the story…? Ungovernable applied to Aramis more often than was comfortable. What was he talking about, a meeting with the Cardinal, games of Court… maybe the Cardinal had spoken with him before he died, it didn't bear thinking about if he'd known about… her and the Dauphin. But they had agreed to keep silent on that... “What did he say then?”

“Odd how history turns on the smallest detail,” answered Aramis, blinking slowly.   

Porthos had always disliked Lent, the dreary fast on behalf of a peevish God who had done little for him. The Easter Mass that followed was a spectacle to enjoy, mind, though for a time he'd dreaded the bells after the year Aramis came home late to it, twenty lost children of the regiment’s own following him, faithful and strong to the end. Except Marsac the deserter. Faithful and strong was every Musketeer, Treville had even taken his arms from it: _Fidele et Fortis,_ faithful and strong. Treville. No. Not Treville. Treville and Easter and lost soldiers. No. “You're not… are you talking about the massacre of Savoy?”

Aramis looked at him blearily. “I don't know, am I?” He was falling into one of his sleeps, dropping fast.

“Treville didn’t - I didn't -” Porthos heard the cracking in his voice. He remembered Aramis come out of the snow, frozen and stiff and like to a corpse himself. Marsac come back thin and wild and murderous, with a crazy story on his lips. “That’s a lie.” Aramis in the garrison courtyard, hair wet from the rain, asking _How much more evidence do you need?_ “It didn't happen that way.”

Something was patting his wrist. “Then it didn’t. I make things up all the time. Or I dreamed it, big man. So it didn't happen.”

“Hell.”

“It's cold,” mumbled Aramis, head dropping to his knees. Then, “There was a woman...”

Porthos glared at the dying fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “like Galigaï” - Leonora Dori Galigaï, prominent supporter of Marie Medici, wife of another, burned for witchcraft in 1617 after her husband Concini was killed ‘resisting arrest’, probably for political reasons - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonora_Dori I keep finding, after I have made peace with the show’s creative approach to history, that sometimes they got things kinda right…
> 
> “Something about a forlorn hope?” - a forlorn hope is a troop of soldiers sent on an insanely dangerous but necessary task, like taking the first breach in a city. The French phrase is the horribly evocative ‘les infants perdus’ - ‘the lost children’
> 
> “the exigencies of a certain situation were made clear to him”/”a piece of their soul belongs to you” - I think that the ickiest part of this version of the story is that Richelieu probably thought he was doing Treville a favour: learn to bend; learn to play the game.


	4. “He said none of this to you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm bringing in some s3 canon because, well, it works with some themes I've been developing here. Content warnings in end notes.

“A girl this time?” asked Porthos.

“Mm,” said Aramis, lifting his hand to demonstrate height. “Maybe seven or eight. Yellow hair in braids. Huh, a name: Pauline. Did I ever mention her?” he asked hopefully.

Porthos shook his head and squinted into the sun as they rode.

Aramis lifted his hands and looked at his palms, guiding his little yellow horse with his knees while he fished for the memory. “I can't have been much older,” he said thoughtfully, “my hands look small. Little birds on the cuffs of the nightshirt - cute.”

“I'm sure you were adorable,” said Porthos dryly. “Were you inside or outside?”

“In an attic with a sloping ceiling, lit by a candle. Oddly noisy for night. She was saying...” he drifted off. “That can't be right.”

“What?”

“I... suspect he wouldn't have wanted you to know,” said Aramis taking up the reins again.

“What else has changed?” Porthos said bitterly.

Aramis regarded him, one eyebrow cocked. Then he shrugged and said, “The girl said, ‘They say your mother is going to sell you,’ and the boy answered, ‘That won't happen in a house like this.’” A breath. “Then the boy asked, ‘Bishop or brewer?’”

At Porthos’ stare he shrugged again, adding, “All a bit lurid.”

“They don't sell kids your colour,” said Porthos carefully, “in Paris.”

“They sell children,” Aramis answered as carefully, “if they live in a brothel. Sometimes,” he amended.

“What the everlasting -”

“Fucking is something I know the sound of,” Aramis said apologetically, “even when it's coming through the floorboards.”

Porthos swallowed. “You're not bothered.”

“Should I be? It happened a long time ago.” He clucked at his horse, who had paused to chew on a roadside flower. “I prefer to save my passions for things I can do something about. For my own sins.” Jezebel ignored him, walking placidly to a tuft of bright green grass and starting on that. Aramis laughed softly, stroking her mane. “Though it does perhaps explain why I am so -” Porthos winced “- comfortable in the presence of women.” The horse shook her mane and began to amble again. “Has it ever occurred to you the similarity between soldiering and prostitution? For both in their way trade their youth and their skill, are lauded and lionised in their youth and beauty; both have their generals and heroes, and conscripts; both, when old, are discarded like worn-out footwear...” 

"That's not a comparison I usually make, no." Mouth dry, Porthos added, “Your father made brandy, you used to say. He tested the proof by mixing it with gunpowder and setting it on fire. I… thought you liked him.”

“Brandy on fire, eh?” said Aramis, mouth quirking. “That’s colourful; I might fish something up with it.”

“Do you want to?” Porthos bit his tongue.

Aramis eyed Porthos sidelong. “He said none of this to you.”

“You were supposed to be the happy one, come out from some idyll in the country. Monsieur le Beau, Mr Pretty: nothing ever stuck to you.” Porthos could feel an edge coming into his voice, and choked it down.

Aramis looked between his horse’s ears and said idly, “I used to think shame was the most corrosive of emotions, but I'm starting to change my mind. Pity, pity is worse. Yours is like bathing in vitriol. You think he didn't want to be that man? That man was real, as real as he could make him. You think he didn't want to see that man in your eyes?” He waved off a fly that was making Jezebel’s ear twitch.

“You said, sometimes you and Flea and Charon would sleep in piles of refuse so the rot of it would keep you warm. You said you became a man in the eyes of the Court by robbing a wealthy clergyman on the steps of Notre Dame. You said, you chose your own birthday. Those are threads in the tapestry of your life, undeniably, but do you really want them to colour all of it? Be reasonable, big man. If that were all you were going to be, you would never have left the Court of Miracles.”

“I don't rip off pieces of myself and throw them over my shoulder,” said Porthos quietly, “like I was running through the woods trying to distract the wolves chasing me.”

“What vivid imagery.”

“If I touch you are you going to go flibberty?”

“I never,” said Aramis, affronted. But he nudged Jezebel up beside Porthos’ Jupiter and laid his hand lightly on the man’s wrist, scarcely to be felt through the thick leather glove, eyes moving at nothing visible as they rode.  

After a long moment he said, “The children misunderstood: it was an adoption, not a sale. M’sieur d’Herblay was a kind man. Please don't think less of him on my account.” And, “He was a regular client of my mother’s. And a friend?”

“You're getting better at this,” said Porthos gently.

“I pick up skills where I can, big man,” Aramis said, smiling, “even the peculiar ones.”

Porthos huffed. Then he pulled a handkerchief out of the hardened leather of his doublet, large and with extravagant lace at the edges. He mopped his brow. “Oh my word,” he said, “I'm coming over all faint.”  

Aramis raised incredulous eyebrows. “You are not at all subtle.”

“I think it's the heat,” said Porthos sadly. “I don't feel quite -”

Aramis sighed gustily and leaned in the saddle, wrapping an arm around Porthos’ ribs, awkwardly because of the different heights of the horses. “Better?”

“Yeah.”

“I used to have sisters, Porthos,” Aramis said after a while. “My mother loved them, too.” Jupiter shifted his feet, and snorted; Jezebel whisked her tail. Somehow with the movement Aramis ended up turned inwards, his other arm coming up. He began to shake in Porthos’ arms like the mainstay of a ship at sea, caught in a storm with the mast near to breaking.  “Porthos, she was dying. She was too thin, and tired, but I didn't know what I was seeing. She died, Porthos, and nobody told me for years. Porthos, I didn't know.”

Porthos curled his hand around the other's neck and tugged him closer. “You know my mother died when I was five?” he murmured. The shakes were catching. He felt Aramis nod. “Aren't we a pair of Mamma’s Boys, eh?”

Aramis chuckled. “Ridiculous. Who'd ever believe we were soldiers?”

"Hopeless."

Beneath them, Jupiter snorted as Jezebel kicked him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Discussed child prostitution and slavery; orphans; crime. Mental health issues. Aramis is dissociating at times and gets a bit dicky with pronouns. I'm making some extrapolations from a few ambiguous comments that could easily be interpreted differently. Nobody actually cries, but...
> 
> “the mainstay of a ship at sea” - ‘mainstay’ is probably more familiar in the figurative sense, as an important support; literally it's a line attached to the tallest mast, helping it hold against the force of the wind. 
> 
> “Nobody told me for years. I didn't know.” - Come to think of it, he didn't know about Adele for years, either. No wonder he was so freaking paranoid about the kid. “If I take my eyes off someone I love THEY WILL DIE.” 
> 
> Couldn't find much on slavery inside France proper - it was going strong in the colonies and that's where most of the literature is - but there seems to have been a principle that a slave entering Paris became free. 
> 
> Ref: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070624181246AA3DkXC
> 
> ‘[1] Slavery in France itself, prior to the Revolution. 
> 
> Within metropolitan France itself, a vaguely worded ordinance of king Louis X, issued in July 1315, was subsequently interpreted as a ban on slavery. The ordinance proclaimed that “following natural law, all men are born free” and therefore that those held in servitude could arrange for their freedom under "good and suitable conditions."’
> 
> It still existed in Spain proper at this time, some with African, some with Moorish descent. Ref: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Spain. (As a random plot bunny that just appeared and I am going to do Absolutely Nothing With, the historical Expulsion of the Moors (from which slaves were excepted) happened around 1610, and many/most were sent into France. Aramis would have been around ten at the time.)
> 
> EDIT:
> 
> Just reread this. It is freaking dark. I am very sorry.


	5. "Something about a pearl."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No happy here. Sorry.

“There was a woman,” Aramis said suddenly, staring at the little fire. “Marie? Mary-Grace? Something about a pearl.”

“Marguerite, perhaps,” said Athos softly.

Aramis nodded. “I remember her as somewhat grey. Pretty clothes.”

“What else do you remember?”

“Pretty room. Gilt on the daybed. Satiation.” He wiped his mouth absently. “Athos, was I a spy before I went away?”

“You never informed me of such.”

“There was something she had that I wanted. And something I didn't dare let her think about.”

That, perhaps, explained how the governess had become entangled in the mess two years ago - or perhaps not: Rochefort had been an expert at coercion. Or perhaps Athos simply wanted to believe that all ills came from him, snake that he was. “And?”

“She told me she loved me,” Aramis said drearily, “and I felt so... is she well?”

“She died.”

Aramis’ eyes slid to the side. “How?”

“... It was put down as murder.”

Madame d'Artagnan - Madame Bonacieux as was - had been very clear about that, in her first letter sent to the front. Athos suspected she had perjured herself and claimed Rochefort confessed to it, to secure the woman a consecrated grave; he was not himself inclined to be so merciful. But then, he was fond of the bourgeois woman, who had been a strange sort of friend to him when he first came to Paris, who had been on trial for attempted regicide through no fault of her own. He was inclined to judge the governess harshly for whatever choices she had made.

Aramis’ knuckles were white where his long fingers wrapped around a tin cup. Athos wished down to his bones that he could say,  _ It wasn't your fault. _

He put more wood on the fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Marguerite' is derived from an old word for pearl. It's also a kind of flower.


	6. “Some things look different when you're older.”

“I have a terrible urge to give you food,” said d'Artagnan.

Aramis looked down at his ribs with a moue of displeasure. “The weight will come back,” he said, nettled. The chilly water rippled around his shins, raising goosebumps, and the shadow of willow branches rippled over his bare shoulders.

“That's a lot of scars.”

“By all means,” Aramis said cheerfully, “inform me that I'm scrawny and damaged. It's a delightful topic.”  

“I wasn't trying to be rude! If I were a girl I'm sure I'd think you very pretty. Er, handsome.”

Aramis chortled. Somewhat mollified, he added, “Most of these are from before, D'Artagnan. I was at war before my whiskers grew: these things do add up.”

“That one on your hip, that's not -”

“- anything but old business, long since settled.” He dipped a hand in the water and scrubbed briskly at his side with a palmful of sand and water. “Really, if you're going to spy on a gentleman's ablutions, be prepared for an eyeful.” But he hooked down his shirt, left-handed, from where it dangled on a drooping branch and let it billow over his head before lifting one foot to check the toes.

D'Artagnan slouched against a tree, arms crossed, and furrowed his sooty eyebrows. “I'm... trying to be a - good listener?” he said cautiously.

“Oh, you're very trying,” muttered Aramis, “but in a sweet way,” he added, smiling. He stooped for more wet sand, apparently unhappy that there was skin left on his legs. “Though how you successfully convinced a woman to stick with you forever...”

“We had our awful moments,” said d'Artagnan honestly. He blew air through his nose, and realised Aramis was watching with gentle interest. “Some of the... things she was worried about, they didn't make sense to me. I knew she was brave; why should she give the human tick she married more than he’d already taken?” He stirred against the tree and said solemnly, “Some things look different when you're older.”

He saw a tiny muscle work in the other man's jaw as he nodded. As solemnly, he answered, “Experience is a great teacher.”

“Which was your earliest battle?” asked d’Artagnan, suddenly curious. “Do you remember yet?”

“Isle de Re, probably. Or Montauban.” Aramis frowned. “I'm a bit fuzzy on which came first. I know I bled at both, which inspired a lifelong interest in caring for my wounds away from the average medical tent...” D'Artagnan nodded vigorously. “Still, war wounds are prodigiously nice for impressing the ladies. They -” He froze of a sudden, eyes distant.

“... Aramis?”

He shook his head ruefully, and rinsed off the last of the sand. “You offered to feed me, did you not?”

***

Later, more dressed and resting with his back against a tree, Aramis asked, “Would you like to hear a story?”

_ Your stories are all horrible, _ thought d'Artagnan,  _ and you never bother smoothing out the contradictions, when it's me.  _ But he said, “Sure,” as he handed Aramis a parcel of bread and cheese, and a stoppered jug of cider.

“My thanks,” said Aramis, unwrapping the food and taking a bite. “There was a woman,” he continued, ignoring d'Artagnan's flinch, “come up from low circumstances.”

“Milady de Winter?” At Aramis’ withering stare d'Artagnan held up his hands in apology.

“Her mother was of indifferent degree, her father perhaps a captain, of no particular regiment, long since gone. She spent much of her childhood running wild, hawking oysters and herring in the street, or serving strong drink to the patrons of the bawdy-house run by her mother. An unsettled life, but it made her nimble. And she was determined to rise.” He paused, taking a drink.

“If she had been a boy she might have gone soldiering for she'd nerve and wit a-plenty, but instead she used the other gifts in her dowry - her mother’s figure and delicate skin, her father's flaming hair, a charm that was uniquely her own… She moved to the theatre, selling tiny oranges to the audience, and worked her way onto the boards; her Isabella was rather wonderful.” Aramis rested his chin on his folded hands and slowly blinked limpid eyes in a stage-perfect  _ lazzi.  _

“In time she caught the eye of a patron, a prominent churchman with an interest in the theatre. And she rejoiced, for she had so many pretty things. Among her possessions, d'Artagnan, she had a lover of her own, a soldier who was himself pretty, though very foolish.

“I believe she cared for him, in her way. Her affections were bright and cutting, but they were real. I know she loved the game of it, keeping the two men twirling about each other. She was what she was, and that was easy to adore.”

“I don't know who that is,” d'Artagnan said frankly. “I can't tell you if she's well.”

“Oh, she's dead,” answered Aramis lightly, his shoulders a stage-perfect image of ease and relaxation. He took another bite from his bread-and-cheese and chewed it reflectively.

“One day, in early winter, the soldier asked her to come away with him and marry. As I said he was foolish for he'd nothing to offer but his own self and that wasn't worth much. No-one would blame her for choosing to stay; I  certainly would not. In the lives they led one makes accommodations, one chooses risks with open eyes, and one does not regret what isn't to be.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I believe Athos knows this one already and Porthos as well, probably.” Aramis raked fingers through his hair. “It is a little before your time, though.”

“Alas, elopement or no, they were careless, and soon her patron found out. Alas, alas, the woman who had been a balm to him was tainted; he thought his head would burst.   

“He made her then an offer, to install her in his grand house in the country. As she was ushered into the carriage her heart sang with joy, oh, oh, oh! But the carriage stopped in woods stricken with snow, cold as hell - d'Artagnan, nothing good ever happens in snowy woods, take my advice and avoid them in future - and she was set afoot in her dainty little shoes.

“As she called her lover's name she was shot with the man’s own gun.”

Aramis wrapped his fingers around the jug of cider and drank deep.  

“And the churchman took the tale of her death to his grave.”

“Why are you telling me this?” d'Artagnan asked again.

Aramis shrugged eloquently. “Adele Basset lived a comedy and died a  _ tragedienne. _ She deserved a round of applause.” He stared at nothing, then said, “She deserved remembrance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Some things look different when you're older.” - In the words of my beta, “Ah, d'Artagnan and the wisdom of youth… I expect he still looks like an embryo to Aramis?” Yes. Yes he does look like an embryo. 
> 
> “...why should she give the human tick she married more than he’d already taken?” - That, and there was a lot of sex they could have been having. Shrug. He was young and horny. 
> 
> I raided some of Adele’s early biographical details from the life of Nell Gwyn, who was the first common-born courtesan to come to mind. (Sorry, Marie du Plessis, another time perhaps.) Women were allowed on the French stage at the time (and like the male actors, excommunicated - yikes!). The theatre was heavily influenced by Commedia dell’Arte; I gave her the stock character of Isabella: “generally portrayed as headstrong, sensuous, and articulate.”
> 
> “...and one doesn't regret what isn't to be.” - We're all aware Aramis is a lying liar, yes?
> 
> “...a stage-perfect lazzi” - a stock gesture or joke used to indicate current feelings of a character or simply evoke a laugh.
> 
> References:  
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/17th-century_French_literature#Theaters_and_theatrical_companies  
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_(commedia_dell%27arte)  
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nell_Gwyn


	7. "The finer points of Catullus"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Athos stutters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: reference to post- traumatic stress and the traumas that caused it. Extreme fluff.

Athos shot upright in the darkness, shaking off his blankets. The other bunk was empty, the bedding, in the shadows left by the tiny brazier, rumpled and disarranged. He dragged himself up and out, grumbling like a bear.

He found Aramis outside, wrapped under a blanket with his feet tucked under him like a tailor, staring at one of the camp’s fires. “Athos,” he asked, as he heard a footfall, “would you do me a favour and light your pipe?”

“What does it remind you of?” asked Athos, hands moving with the pipe and lighting the shreds of moist, pungent tobacco with a splinter from the dying fire.

“Here.”

Something in the curve of Aramis’ back eased at the rich earthy smell from the pipe and he opened his blanket, tucking up his legs and letting Athos settle beside him. He scrubbed his eyes irritably. “Bad dream, that's all.”

Athos said nothing, puffing at the pipe.

“Have you ever felt like nothing but a ghost, trespassing among the living?”

“Yes.”

There was a steaming mug by Aramis’ feet, which he picked up and sipped from. Courteous, he offered it to Athos, who tried it and grimaced. “What's in there?”

“Rosemary. Feverfew. A few other things I can sniff out at an apothecary. The maid used to mix it up.” Silence. “It helps the headache.”

“Still?”

Silence.  

In trade, Athos said, “It was after my wife - Anne, she - and my brother.” He gulped air and said precisely, “I did not want to believe that Thomas would do such a thing. And she lied about _everything._ So I had her - and - ” He swallowed, throat full of gravel. “After that I could not make a decision for a very long time. Either I had let a monster into my house or I hadn't, hadn't defended... ” He hissed. "Nothing seemed real. Not even myself.”

Aramis asked, quite low, “What did you do?”

“You and Porthos are the most alive people I know. The boy, too.” He turned from the embers to stare at Aramis. “Why did you two adopt me?”

A smile curled Aramis’ mouth. “You could declaim Latin poetry when your blood was three-fifths brandy and you had the most beautiful hands. I'm not always very deep.”

Athos looked down at his hands in startlement. “Seriously?”

“Tchah.” Aramis took the pipeless hand and rubbed his thumb over a chapped knuckle. “Not that you ever took proper care of them; it was a source of great frustration to me.”

Athos felt his ears growing very hot. Aramis’ black eyes brightened with amusement. “It wasn't something I noticed at the time.”

“Oh,” Aramis purred, “but you did.” He sighed woefully. “But only when you were four-fifths brandy, and I draw the line at one-fifth, perhaps two if the other is a very close friend. As I said, a source of great frustration.” His eyes grew distant, retrieving some memory like a tickled fish. “It was good to hear Porthos laugh. He was very mother-hennish and worried at the time, though I can't recall why.” He huffed. “But there was amusement in my antics, and I got a friend who fights like a demon out of it. I have no regrets.”

 _Savoy,_ Athos thought to himself. At the time he'd barely registered the massacre - a part of the regiment’s history to be sure, the reason why Treville, desperate for trained men, had risked taking on a dissolute wreck such as himself. He wasn't sure he'd even realised, blanketed in his own misery as he was, that there was a survivor. He said nothing: better to let those demons sleep a little longer.

 _“Non si Pegaseo ferar volatu,_ _non Rhesi niveae citaeque bigae…”_ Aramis murmured fondly, butchering Catullus’ Latin but with a beguiling rhythm to his words, _“Tanto te in fastu negas, amice?”_

“Was I truly that haughty?” Athos asked, mortified.

He felt Aramis shake in silent laughter. “You were magnificent,” he promised. “Though we never found you hiding between a woman's rosy breasts either.” The heat deepened to Athos’ neck. “Sometimes, when you were in your cups, you would prop yourself on one of our shoulders and just fall asleep; it was immensely endearing. _Uel, si uis, licet obseres palatum...”_ he added, smiling to himself.

 _However, if you will, you may lock up your lips,_ Athos translated silently, and finished, _so long as you let me be a sharer in your love._

“Aramis,” he said cautiously, “would it help if I - you had many lovers in Paris - I mean...” Now his _face_ was burning.

“Athos,” Aramis said as cautiously, “are you propositioning me?”

Athos stuttered.

“I do not think that is what you truly want,” Aramis said, very gently.

“But would it help?”

He felt Aramis touch his wrist lightly. “I thank you,” he said. And, “There are many ways of being loved.”

The silence reached out like a comforting hand. In time Athos realised Aramis had fallen asleep, propped up on his shoulder.

He kissed the top of his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is humbly dedicated to everyone who hasn't yet realised they're beautiful. You are. Trust me. 
> 
> Aramis quotes and references bits of Catullus 55: http://www.vroma.org/~hwalker/VRomaCatullus/055.html
> 
> “… not though I were to soar aloft like flying Pegasus... not if I were the swift snow-white pair of Rhesus could I overtake you… Do you deny yourself so haughtily, my friend?”
> 
> "Give me my Camerius, you wicked girls!" One of them, baring her naked bosom, says "Look here, he is hiding between my rosy breasts."
> 
> “However, if you will, you may lock up your lips, so long as you let me be a sharer in your love.”


	8. "It seems paradoxical, I know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: There's some talk of past, extreme violence. It's not at all graphic - this story is about the aftershadows - but, you know, read safely.

“Do you know what you're listening for?” Aramis inquired of the top of Athos’ head.

“I know what pneumonia sounds like,” said Athos, muffled. His breath, even through the muslin of Aramis’ shirt, was warm against his ribs. Aramis coughed twice, very daintily.

Athos lifted his magnificent eyes. “If you catch an autumn ague and die now I shall boil your bones, string you like a puppet, and make you dance an Irish jig. ”

“That’s me told,” Aramis muttered. “I must introduce you to Kitty; you'd get along famously.” But, obedient, he breathed deeply under Athos’ ear. “What do I sound like?”

“You crackle,” said Athos, sitting up.

Aramis absorbed this knowledge of his inner workings silently.

“May I?” Athos gestured to Aramis where he reclined on the cot, black doublet unbuttoned, propped up with pillows.

“I'm not made of spun sugar, Captain,” Aramis answered. He tugged his shirt out of the waistband of his breeches and bared his lean torso, revealing a small but livid puncture wound like a flower adorning his ribs.

Athos reached to touch -

There was a knife in Aramis’ hand.

Athos sat back. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, certainly.” Aramis twisted the slender spike of a blade nimbly with his fingers and placed the tip over a red dot in his lower ribs. “This is what saved me. It seems paradoxical, I know, but a second piercing gave me back my breath. I owe whoever taught me that trick a very good drink.”

“Doctor Lemay, when Treville was shot. You assisted.”    

Aramis’ eyes asked questions. Athos answered, “It took time for his vigour to return, but it did.”

Aramis nodded infinitesimally.  

Looking at the cuffs of his shirt sleeves, Athos said mildly, “Porthos said that you'd taken some beatings.”

“I talk too much when I'm sleepy,” Aramis said lightly, still reclining.

“Was… Spymaster Vargas the source of any of them?”

Aramis tutted. “That is a man who leaves the print of his acquaintance written in very large letters. So, no, not even from the time I do not remember.”

Athos nodded, not looking up, hands still.

“From some soldiers in early spring,” said Aramis quietly. “That time was almost an accident.”

“What did you do?”

“I walked down the wrong street looking Spanish.”

Athos did not stir. “They were French?”

“Mm. I may also have been a little… mouthy.”

“What was - Madame doing in all this?”

“Making good use of the distraction. What she stole was well worth a few bruises, Athos, and when I could w- wander around the town again my credibility was impeccable. It was a trade I was satisfied with.”

Athos drew breath, let it out.

Aramis curled himself upright, leaning into the space between them, and nudged the hilt of Madame's favourite hairpin into Athos’ fingers. “A few bumps and bruises don't signify, hm?”

“That’s always a trade you're satisfied with, is it?”

“It is infinitely preferable to the reverse,” Aramis said flatly.

“And she knew you saw it that way.”

Athos looked up in time to see something swim in Aramis’ eyes, quickly dismissed. “It's complicated.” He picked up Athos’ free hand and guided it under his shirt to the hard raised flesh of the recent wound. “And this is healing fine.”

“Can you tell me which regiment?”

“That’s not a useful question.”

Athos put the wickedly sharp knife on the bed beside Aramis, in easy reach.

_ “I am not broken.” _

“A little bruised, perhaps.”

“I'm tired all the time; anyone would be twitchy.”

“And - your partner isn't here, to watch your back.”

“Something like that.  _ Athos,” _ he said, as the Captain moved to stand. “I - there's a hitch in my side and I can't... tidy my hair properly.”

“Well,” said the Captain, bending and rummaging in his kit, “we cannot have you unkempt.”

Aramis sat on the edge of the bed and tipped his head forward so that his Captain could, with infinite gentleness, work a comb through his hair.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter humbly dedicated to everybody who has had a post-injury guarding reflex. They suck. 
> 
> I think Lemay would have been so very pleased that his treatment went on to save another man's life. If I understand the basic principles correctly - if air or blood floods the cavity holding the lung, it gets squashed. The second puncture releases the pressure and breath is restored. A sound of crackling, post-injury fatigue, and vulnerability to lung disease also go with the injury. All information from WebMD; please don't try any of this at home.


	9. "So that's how it is."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter of Kindness is happening, I promise, but some of the conversations are a bear, so it's taking a while. In the meantime, I needed to, like, post something. 
> 
> It's a sad one. Sorry.

_The Red Dovecote_

 

“Athos! _Athos!”_

The Musketeer Captain dropped the bottles of wine he was holding, drew his sword, and muscled through the door to the upper room. D'Artagnan was in there, hands raised, amid the overturned chairs and a table with its plates knocked askew, his brown leather painted tawny in the firelight. With the tip of his sword Athos righted a fallen candlestick before its little flame could catch anything alight. He heard the soft, heavy tread of Porthos coming up behind him.

“We were just talking about his early days in the army,” d'Artagnan said in a breathy rush, not looking at them. “It was nothing, he was laughing and...” He trailed off gestured to the far corner, where Aramis had crammed himself into the shadows, the back of his hand pressed to his mouth, eyes very bright.

Athos sheathed his sword, crouching to pick up the candle stick. Over his head, Porthos said mildly, “Are you with us?”

The marksman swallowed, dryly, and asked, “There was a Musketeer who joined when the Regiment formed. Good with dogs; chewed cloves to sweeten his breath. His name was -”

“Marsac.” Porthos kept his voice very soft.

“He was - I - you knew him?”

“A little. He left before Athos and the kid here joined.”

“Hey now,” said d'Artagnan, without heat.

“Why did he leave?”

“You don't remember?”

“Not that part. He was my friend.”

“He was a piece of - he wasn't a good man, Aramis.”

“I shot him. I shot my friend.” Aramis moved his eyes from Porthos to Athos to d'Artagnan and back.

“I thought it was Treville who made the shot,” muttered d'Artagnan.

“Apparently not,” breathed Athos.

“You didn't know that?” Aramis asked, voice cracking. “You can't tell me why I k-killed...”

“He was a deserter,” said Athos calmly, staying low to the floorboards.

“He was no Musketeer,” growled Porthos. _“Fuck_ Marsac.”

Aramis flinched. Athos followed his gaze to the doorway, where dark red wine from the broken bottles was spreading in a widening pool.

Porthos put one hand on d'Artagnan's shoulder and moved him to block the view. “I'll get a mop,” he said quietly, and vanished out the door.

“He isn't angry at _you,_ do you understand?”

“No,” answered Aramis honestly. A thud from outside the room shook motes of plaster from the walls.

Athos took a breath. “Not long before I joined, Marsac left the Regiment under a cloud.”

“I didn't follow him?”

“He… didn't want you to.” Athos licked his lips. “There was an injured Musketeer in his care, whom he abandoned in the woods at the mercy of his wounds.”

“That sounds rather horrible. Did he have a reason?”

“Not one that he shared. When he returned to Paris, none of us were inclined to trust his word, about anything. Except you. You listened.”

“What happened to the injured man?”

“He lived.”

“Good for him. And then?”

“He made some accusations against Captain Treville. As I said, we didn't trust his word. We… shouldn't have left you alone with him. I am sorry for that.”

“But we did in the end,” said d'Artagnan, his dark eyes shrewd. “He attacked the Captain, but was killed. You, you and Treville, you buried him in the churchyard where the other Musketeers lie. We thought that was the end of it.”

Aramis’ gaze shifted to d'Artagnan. “You were afraid of me.”

“Not on Marsac’s account,” the youth said bluntly. “I didn't grieve for him either. He was a pig who tried to -” He thought about it, then shook his head. “Let that lie.”

“So that’s how it is, I'm damned,” Aramis muttered, “or no, what punishment of God is not a gift?”

D'Artagnan lifted a tanned hand, let it drop, and said, “I'm going to help Porthos with the mop.” He put a chair where he'd stood and backed out of the room, avoiding the puddle.

“You're keeping something back,” Aramis said to Athos.

“Yes.”

“Does any of this have relevance to our current labour?”

“I do not believe so.”

Aramis squared his shoulders. “Well then.”  

***

Porthos tripped on a pair of boots, left outside another guest’s door for cleaning, and slammed into the plastered wall with a thud. He righted himself, cursing his inattention, and took a moment to breathe.

When he heard d'Artagnan pad up behind him he put his hand flat against the wall, feeling the tiny grains of plaster under his fingers. “You want to know why I didn't go on the Savoy training expedition?” he asked mildly. “I had a poor stomach after eating bad fish. That's all. I used to dream of what I'd do if I ever ran across that deserter, who left him bleeding out in the snow. I dreamed and I planned.” He shook his head and strode down the hall, the boy following.

“The one and only flogging in our garrison, was when Treville heard a couple of men wondering what he might’ve done to survive. I mean, the Captain couldn't look at Aramis while he was all pale and ghosty but he had his back, yeah?

“And a couple of months later he'd walked it off, he was fine, he was drinking with the men and laughing, he'd picked up a ridiculous crush on a disreputable drunkard of a new recruit, we were careful with him around Easter _but he was fine.”_

The innkeeper's wife, when they found her, had her bodice unlaced and a baby attached to her breast, with a dark-eyed, dark-haired child clinging to her striped skirts. Porthos got directions, found the bucket, and they climbed down the narrow stairs to the courtyard and the well. The bucket rattled down and splashed at the bottom. He hauled it up, feeling the simple pull in his arms and back. 

“So I was going to believe accusations against the most honorable man I knew from the deserter who left, who left him to whistle in the wind?” he said eventually.

“I didn't want to either,” said d'Artagnan softly, thumbs tucked in his belt, “and I'd only just met you all.”

Porthos hawked and spat on the ground. “We left him alone. And when it was over I thought he'd found peace, I thought he was _fine.”_

“At least he doesn't remember the massacre part of it.”

“He knows,” said Porthos wearily. “He just doesn't know that he knows it. Not that it happened to _him.”_ He set the full bucket on the edge of the well and  scrubbed his face. “I'm tired.”

When they got back with the bucket and mop Athos and Aramis were sitting at the table, cards in their hands, talking lightly of Venice. A dark travelling cloak was spread over the mess. Aramis looked up and smiled at them. “Porthos, d'Artagnan,” he said. “My apologies for the fuss.”

_So that's how it is._

They sat down and Athos dealt them in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That moment you stop trusting your friend's happy face ever. again.


	10. "We've been in the wars."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning
> 
> References people who are disabled or were born oddly being treated as marketable exotics. I hope I have treated this as respectfully as I can, given that the topic is inherently awful; if you feel that I have not, please comment and I’ll try to do better. 
> 
> I’ll also say up front that I’m writing the Court of Miracles as a shitpit of crime and beggary because it is proverbial, over centuries, for being this way and because Porthos looked fair revolted at the prospect of being back. _Not all impoverished areas are like this._ People living off the smell of an oily rag often turn out very kind to the people around them. (And sometimes, also, angry, disaffected, disenfranchised, more angry... People are people, yeah?)
> 
> But... I'm also presuming that when Porthos left the Court of Miracles, it was not just the appalling living conditions he was getting away from but a system of ethics which he was not, as an adult, okay with. To put it another way, I think he did things, thought things as a teenager of which he is now ashamed. “There’s always a choice,” is what he said in s3 to an unrepentant thief, and I think he made one. In any case, that’s the issue that some of this chapter is touching on.
> 
> There's nothing plot-critical if you feel like skipping.

“C’mon,” said Porthos grimly. “It's time to get it out.”

“Must we?” asked Aramis sadly.

“You know the rules.” At Aramis’ involuntary wince he said, “It'll hurt less once things get going.”

Aramis sighed but settled on the floor in front of the fire in the grate, resting against Porthos’ shins. He offered up his right hand sacrificially and the big man took it, stretching his arm gently upwards until Aramis tensed slightly against the hitch of the scar in his side. He lowered it and repeated the movement several times.

“You monster,” said Aramis lightly.

“That I am,” Porthos agreed. “Now pull.”

Aramis hissed at the movement. Porthos hummed thoughtfully, considering the tension. “I don't think anything important was cut,” he said at last. “You're weak on that side, mind.”   

Aramis grunted, looking away.

“Were you worried?”

“I'm quite a good left-hand fencer, after tutoring… her,” he said, then, “I had a lot of things to worry about; losing capability on my right isn't the worst thing in the world.”

“Did you really -” Porthos cut himself off.

“Mm?” asked Aramis, relaxing as his arm was moved in gentle circles.

“You really travelled with her a year without talking about... your head... once.”

Aramis was silent for a time, then said, “At first I thought it would come back in a little while - too much wine perhaps, or a goose egg to the temple - and every time I had to start over I thought the same: _it will pass soon enough.”_ He chuffed a laugh. “By the time I trusted her enough to proclaim myself a liability, I didn't _need_ to. We were… what we were.”

“You loved her,” said Porthos, an odd husk in his voice.

“In my way.” Silence. “Depending on someone that long… it is impossible not to feel strongly about them. And there is much to love about her.”

“You always adored a violent woman.”

Aramis tilted his head back against Porthos’ knees and grinned up at him. “Always.” Porthos’ free hand settled lightly on his forehead and, when he didn’t tense, laced into the curls at the top of his head and tugged gently. Aramis’ eyes drooped, and he hummed a little.

After a time, he said, quite low, “And sometimes ignorance is bliss.”

“I know it’s hard, coming back,” said Porthos softly.  

“No,” said Aramis dryly, eyes still shut, “it’s _fascinating_ to turn and see my past laid behind me spread out like the tails of Joseph’s resplendent coat: look! every colour a different disgrace.”

“It wasn’t all bad.”

Aramis said nothing for a time, then, “How did you join the Musketeers?”

“Ah, well, I was in the infantry when Treville came by looking for warm bodies, and I’d just survived taking my first breach, so I was feelin’ a bit cheeky…” Porthos trailed off. Aramis was listening, he knew, calm in the flicker and crackle of the fire, leaning solid against his shins as one of the half-feral cats of the Court of Miracles might, if you kept very still and pretended not to see it.

“I grew up rough,” he said then, “in a rookery of beggars and thieves. I told you some of that before.” He felt more than saw his friend’s nod. “It was rough. Not always horrible, I had some good times, but it was rough. After my mother died… the King of the Court, they’d bring in scraps for the kids sometimes, and there was an old Jew wintered over some years did his best for the strays, but most of the adults there who look after kids want them as helpers - someone wee to boost through a window, or a mite to look pathetic and crippled to bring in the pennies. The thieving I took to better; just sitting an’ waiting for charity makes my stomach curdle. The looks on their faces…” He could feel the corners of his mouth turning down.

“There’s a smell to the Court. Y’don’t notice it while you’re there, it just seeps into your skin like dye, but get away for a week an’ it punches you in the face when you come back, makes you feel like you never left and never will: it’s all been a dream.” Aramis made a small sound in his throat. “Hold up,” Porthos said, “I want to check your side.” He let his friend guide his hand under his shirt to the tense knot of scar tissue under his arm, still a little hot and tender. He rubbed around it gently, trying to ease some of the tightness in the surrounding muscles. “Can you twist around?” Aramis hissed when he tried. “Sometimes the little things bite the fiercest,” Porthos said.

“I had two pals, Charon an’ Flea. Now, we called her Flea ‘cause she’d taught herself to leap straight up in the air and kick folk in the head. Damnedest thing you ever saw. Charon got his name from his dad, used to be a book dealer. I’m ‘Porthos’ after my grandad and that’s all I know about him. We hung together pretty tight; it’s safer when you got someone to watch your back.”

“So there I was, still a skinny bit, but I’d gotten spooky-tall that summer. Too big for window-diving, too proud to cover my face in fake sores, too… I dunno. I was angry all the time.”

He’d been counted a man in the eyes of the Court for two years by then, but it had been a thin season for him, skinny with the new height and suddenly clumsy, leaning too hard on his friends for food and his innards still gaping inside him. The King of the Court had taken him aside a week before, to discuss his future they said. (In the years of his youth, the King was two men, two men with two arms and three legs between them, joined at the side. Everyone reckoned they could have made it in a proper royal Court in the exotics side if they’d wanted, but they’d stayed with the poor - not as ruthless as Sarazin to the west or Queen Euphrosine across the river - but they brought in money, centimes and deniers and pistoles and louis…) Jean-Sebastien, tawny-haired, had offered to teach him the finer points of beggary, how to mark one’s face and hold the body for maximum pity, how to wheedle. Jean-Marie watched with shrewd, dark eyes and instead offered him a job as their bodyguard. “You want Charon, too?” Porthos had asked. “For a matched set?” And the King laughed and said, “Think on it. There’s a lot you can learn if you keep your eyes open.”

“An’ I was walking through the market, thinking, _This is it? This is what’s for me?_ I was in gladrags that day, pretending I belonged. I didn’t. That thing they say about pirates, in the law books… _At war with all the world._ This was the World an’ I was at War with it. That greengrocer - I’d nicked half-rotten apples from there the week before.  That old lady slumming it, with the boxwood cane and the string of pearls each as big as my thumbnail? She had nothing for me ‘cept maybe a centime tossed if I swept the dung off the street aheada her, or carried her boxes. More if I made a good show.”

He folded Aramis’ right arm against his chest, curled in with the wrist and fingers drooping down. “Keep it like this long enough and the muscles will shrink; it’ll get skinny and stay that way on its own. Makes for a nice visual.” Aramis shook him off angrily. Porthos sat back, arms to the side and his hands open until his friend settled again against his legs. Aramis tangled Porthos’ fingers in his hair again; they both sighed.

“‘Fshe knew where I come from, she’d beat me with her cane or call the market watch, just ‘cause I come from there. An’ she was meat, Aramis. That necklace alone, even with the fence’s cut, would of fed me and Flea and Charon for a month. She was meat.” Porthos kept the hand in his friend’s hair light and gentle, though the other was gripping his thigh tight enough to bruise.

“An’ I don’t know why, Aramis, I simply don’t know, but I started wondering what my mother would of seen, looking at the lady leaning on her cane. I wondered, if she was there looking at me, what she’d see. An’ I just started walking.

He stared at the fire of their hired room, listening to the crackle of it, the slow surf of their breaths.

“And then?”

Porthos blinked and stirred. “Charon caught up with me just after I crossed the river. He knew I wasn’t coming back. Told me I was mad going Outside, they’d chew me up and spit me right back. Blacked my eye t’remember him by. Hugged me ‘til I thought my ribs would break. Flea was perched up on a little wall.”

She’d been quite comfortable up there with her feet tucked up beneath her, swimming in an old faded shirt of Porthos’, and boy’s breeches with her skinny knee poking through a hole in the cloth. “Come with me,” he called.

“Nah.” She shook her head scornfully, dirty blonde hair falling in her eyes. “Where _I_ live, a girl like me c’n fly.”

She hooked herself up to her feet and paced back and forth on the ragged top of the wall over the little gate he had to go through. “You reckon you’re going to see the World?”

“I’m going to see something. _Flea._ Come with me. _There’s always a choice.”_

“And I made mine,” she said primly. She turned her back on him.

Porthos rubbed his scalp. Stamped his feet in the dust that overlay the cobbles. Put his hand on the latch of the wicket gate.

“You loved them,” said Aramis.

“Not enough to stay.” Porthos swallowed around the husk in his voice; blinked hard.

Then a little wash-leather bag landed by his boots, fat with coin. “I’ll get it back next time I see ya,” Flea called, a little scrap of a thing looking back at him. She ran along the top of the wall, and dived back into the city.

Porthos opened the gate.

“An’ then I got a job in the baggage train of a regiment, just heading out,” he told Aramis. “Which is a story all its own.”

“We’ve been in the wars,” Aramis said drowsily.

“Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ”I’d just survived taking my first breach” - this is a huge deal, by the by. First in the breach of a fortress wall generally came with a promotion because mostly the people who did that died.
> 
> “Now, we called her Flea ‘cause she’d taught herself to leap straight up in the air and kick folk in the head.” - You will pry ‘Flea the proto-savate-fighter' from my cold. dead. fingers.


	11. "That was you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote most of this in the belief that the battle of La Rochelle was earlier than it actually, historically, was. I'm having a, well it's not a good week, and do not currently have the nous to untwist the timelines. Sorry. The other facts about the siege pretty much come from wikipedia. Sorry.
> 
> CW: v. mild on-screen violence; references to a historical murder and war time civilian casualties.
> 
> Also, I wasn't having a good week when I wrote this. You have been warned.

“We have chairs,” said Porthos mildly, slapping drops of water from his arms and shoulders. He stamped his feet in the doorway of their upper room and retrieved a delicate burden from the breast of his armoured jacket - three speckled eggs in a net of twisted straw.

Athos looked up from reading a sheaf of translated letters, chin resting on his fist. “I offered the table,” he said. “They wanted the floor. Do you know,” he added quizzically, lifting a sheet of fresh paper to the light, “do you know he copies my wife’s hand whenever he glosses a personal opinion into the text he’s translating?”

“It made it easier to mix and match,” said Aramis cheerfully, sitting like a tailor with his legs tucked up beneath him on the floorboards and frowning over a collection of pebbles, scraps, and purloined utensils, laid out like a demented game of chess.

 _"Alexandrine von_ _Taxis,"_ quoted Athos drily,  _"loves her son, and her family's prestige, and a well-ordered post line. But if you want her to love_ you, _also, then do you flatter and insult her cat in equal measure._  Do you collect mice to move mountains, Aramis?"

"I once bribed a man with nectarines," said Aramis. "And a great deal of money, but it was the fruit that swung the deal." He hovered himself over the litter, frowning, and adjusted a broken straw. “And why were we besieging the second largest city in France?” he asked d’Artagnan.

“General bloody-mindedness,” d’Artagnan grumbled. He shifted himself, grumpy as a molting hawk, and added, “La Rochelle’s a good port, and everybody was worried about the English invading. It’s far better than an empty beach to land on.”

“And it was full to bursting with Protestants and Protestant sympathisers,” said Aramis, “who were getting angry and fearful since the Edict of Nantes was revoked. La Rochelle was their last real standing-place but they still had much economic and military clout, increasing reason to use it, and Louis and his advisors were uninclined to deal at this time.”

“Well to be fair,” said d’Artagnan, “we’re a Catholic country. Huguenots don’t have to stay here if they don’t want to.”

“Hph. Interesting to think what it would be like if Protestant Henry hadn’t changed his colours and bought Paris with a mass. So, and so, and how were the armies situated in March, then?”

The boy sighed, rolled his eyes, and said, “The main infantry _here._ Swiss pikemen _here._ The -” At the sound of Porthos cracking eggs into a little sweetened wine d’Artagnan’s eyes shifted and he started to turn. Aramis reached rapid as a mother-cat with a kitten and clipped him lightly on the temple.

“Am I repeating myself for the beauty of my voice?” he asked sweetly.

D’Artagnan stared at him, hand to his head, shocked.

Aramis’ face softened. “Even one such as you can learn this,” he said seriously. “It just takes some practice, like sword drills or your catechism. Here,” he said, moving the younger man’s hands over their map so that his fingers touched each of their idiosyncratic markers in turn, “your hands can hold a memory if you let them. So - ringing about La Rochelle were the bastions Pyramus, Thisbe, Ludovic the Cruel, its mate Ludovica…”

“Where were you in all this?”

Aramis scratched under his beard and frowned.

“We came guarding the King a month later,” said Porthos over his shoulder, thoughtfully, as he reached to hang more wine, in an iron pot, from a hook in the fireplace. “The sea-walls were starting to block the harbour and you couldn’t get fish for love nor money for Friday dinner.”

“Did I complain?” asked Aramis, craning his head back to grin up at Porthos. His hands moved automatically, adjusting the markers for the troops.

“Like a grand duchess’s cat.”

“That bad, tch.”

Porthos lumbered down to the floor with a weary sigh and touched the half-potato that marked one of the bastions ringing the city. “This, that you’re calling Thisbe, some madman of a heavy cavalry officer had breakfast there three days before we arrived in camp, with no-one but his batman and a couple of mates to shoot while he reloaded. Everyone was talking about it.” They heard a quiet splutter and looked to the table, where Athos’ cheeks showed the pink of a spring cherry.

“No,” said Porthos in wonderment. “That was _you?”_

Aramis’ grin showed like the sun. “My Captain,” he said solemnly, “I need the details. My heart craves them.”

“This was before… you know that story now. I was serving out the military service expected of a nobleman of my rank. And I was bookish. It was impossible to find anywhere quiet to read in the troop quarters. My temper rather got away with me and I made a foolish bet with a Swiss Guardsman.”

“And…?”

“I won the bet,” said Athos, and said nothing more, hiding his glowing cheeks behind a letter.

“But what about the English?” asked d’Artagnan, gesturing to a small flotilla of bread crumb ships hoving on the edge of their map.

“Ah!” said Aramis, “a salient observation. The Cardinal sent the Blue Hare.”

“A ship?”

“Milady’s predecessor, a humble practitioner of the miracle trade named for a country tale about skin-shifting witches. She was asked to… discourage Buckingham’s plans for a fleet… one way or another.”

“Buckingham was murdered by a disgruntled Puritan,” added Porthos. “That was the Cardinal?”

“And a clever woman, yes.”

“What’s she like?”

Aramis shrugged, his thumb gently ticking one bead on a string back and forth. Finally he said, “Of unprepossessing looks. Often presented herself as a servant. She dropped out of sight at the end of that summer, God walk with her.”

“Dead?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps she slipped her leash: even assassins have a holiday now and then.”

D’Artagnan shifted uncomfortably on his haunches. _We’ve been at this two hours,_ he mouthed to Porthos. “So how did you storm the city in the end?” he asked.

“Well we did and we didn’t,” said Aramis at last. He tapped the line of the seawall. “This blocked the English reinforcements. It also blocked the food.”

After a time he added, “They were sending almost all their rations to the soldiers, to keep their sword arms strong.” He swallowed. “Not enough. Too much.”

The fire crackled.

“You get,” said Porthos, “you _get_ that you were a common soldier following orders, right?”

“Oh I know,” said Aramis, his voice light and easy. “Enemies of France and all that. English sympathisers and heretics, all starving in the dark like wights in hell.”

He leaned forward, and with the tip of a callused finger traced letters on d’Artagnan’s face - an _o_ around one eye, an _m_ following his brow ridge, another _o_ \- _omo,_ an old word for ‘human’. He scrubbed his own face with the palms of his hands and dropped them. “This too is war, little soldier. Here endeth the lesson.”

“Where are you, Aramis?” asked Porthos softly.

Aramis blinked. “We’re at the Red Dovecote, Porthos.”

“Come to the table, brother,” said Athos. “There’s wine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // I’ve seen several recipes for eggs in hot alcohol (brandy, wine, rum, ale etc.) from that period and later. Often recommended for invalids - lots of calories and protein with the grog, I guess. Porthos may have not exactly paid for the eggs he retrieved from the inn’s henhouse (old habits die hard).
> 
> // The bit with the nectarines stolen from _The Count of Monte Cristo_. I don't know if Alexandrine von Taxis had cats, but she ran the postal system for large chunks of Europe at this time.
> 
> // _mice to move mountains_ \- Athos is inverting a proverb about mountains labouring to produce a mouse.
> 
> // _if Protestant Henry hadn’t changed his colours and bought Paris with a mass_ \- So Louis’ dad Henry of Navarre wasn’t born to his throne, he was one of three rival claimants shifting armies around France trying to capture the flag. And he was raised Protestant. He had Paris under siege, which surrendered when he converted. The Edict of Nantes promised some religious freedom to his old faith, but was repealed by Louis and his advisors.
> 
> // catechism - a method of oral instruction, usually structured around question and answer. In a century when literacy was low and _translating the bible_ was borderline heretical this was most of the religious instruction that a country kid like d’Artagnan would receive. Of catechists in literature, the one that most sticks out for me is the blind one from Robert Louis Stevenson’s _Kidnapped!_ whom all the locals knew robbed people on the road if he could, but y’know, someone had to teach the children, so…
> 
> As for how Aramis is packing this all away in his cracked head - personal memory and rote memorisation work differently. Can you remember learning “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”? Can you sing it word perfect? Etc.
> 
> // I made up the Blue Hare as an early version of Richelieu's Little Helper (he's been around a while; Milady was unlikely the first). I’m unlikely to do anything more with her. 
> 
> // _an o around one eye, an m following his brow ridge, another o - omo, an old word for ‘human’._ \- this is a reference to Dante’s _Inferno,_ , where some of the inmates have starved so much that their nature, human, is written on their faces.


	12. "I'm not always good at knowing the 'why'."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found this, almost finished, in my draft file. Here ya go.
> 
> (There's a bit of a fusion with 20 Years After, if you're interested, but nothing plot-critical.)

“There was a child,” said Aramis, holding his little golden cross that it might spin and dangle over his eyes. He had one arm crooked over the flat pillow and his head pillowed on that, mellow as a sleepy cat.

“Was there?” asked Athos, very neutrally, as he put more charcoal on the fire on the little grate of the inn room that they shared..

“Mn. It's why I joined the army.”

Athos paused, hand and coal hovering over the low fire. He felt the heat suddenly and dropped the coal, shaking his fingers from the sting of it. “You were sixteen when you joined the army.” He lifted his eyes and saw Aramis rub the bristles on his throat with his long fingers.

“Sixteen sounds about right. She was, ah… Helene? Agnes? Isabelle? Bright and straight as a candle. The child passed from her six months along and there was - they - I wasn't allowed to see her. After that I needed to change things, so…” He shrugged expressively. “Funny how things go.” He turned his head and looked at Athos straight. "I'm not always good at knowing the 'why'. It is good to have this one."

Watching Athos' still face, he said, "We never talked about this sort of thing, did we?"

Athos shook his head minutely. "I was... rather grateful you did not pry into my own past affairs," he said. "I thought it a courtesy to refrain from yours." He dropped one more piece of fuel on the fire and came to sit nearby. "I am coming to regret the keeping of secrets." He took a breath, shoulders braced and hands set on his knees. Aramis glanced at him from under his lashes and held out the golden cross, tiny, delicate, and surprisingly heavy. Athos lifted one hand and let the ribbon slide onto his soot-blackened fingers. He released his breath with a sigh and let the cross rest in the hollow of his hand. "It was the Spaniard you gave this to, was it not?"

"Hn. It held a wish for Jeromin's safety."

 "And you had it with you all along?'

A hiss of Aramis' hair as he shook his head. "I found it in an abandoned house in the high places outside Mantua. The occupants packed in a hurry; it was under an overturned chair. I'm a bit of a jackdaw these days: anything shiny gets tucked in my pocket."

He cocked one eyebrow quizzically. "But you recognise it, Athos. From before?" He watched Athos' face. "It was precious to him and you remember it."

Athos nodded slightly. He licked his lips and drew breath.

Aramis stopped dead, eyes on nothing. “Athos,” he said cautiously, “did you ever know an Agnes, a woman with reddish-blondish hair, a little shy, sweetest smile you ever saw?” The other nodded, frowning, and he sat upright suddenly, babbling, “I saw her, I gave her the cross to keep her safe? There was frost in the air of the courtyard and the children, Henri and Raoul, they were riding hobby-horses around the orange tree in the centre of it. I gave Agnes' patroness a bible bound in green velvet for, I don't know what reason.”

He seized Athos by the shoulders and kissed both the older man's cheeks. “This is somewhere I _was,_ where I _went,_ thank you, Captain. In Spain. They were living in Spain and a war was starting so I turned back from Douai to escort them to a neutral city. That's why I wasn't there, I didn't lie to you. Not to you, not to Porthos, or to the boy either. Athos, who is Agnes?”

A little stunned Athos said, "A woman who needed help."

The breath left him then as Aramis' arms wrapped around his torso and hugged him tightly.

"Thank you, Athos," he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't find my reference, sorry, but if I recall correctly the legal age of marriage in that part of Europe, at that time, was mid-to-low teens.
> 
> But the _average_ for that century bounced between 22 and 27 years of age, varying with the availibility regular work/income. One divider between France and other parts of Europe was whether the newly weds would be expected to start up their own household (and need the income for that), or stay with the extended family and tap into established resources. Nobility - like Louis and Anne f'rinstance - had established resources, and often were married off for alliances, so skewed young. (Anne was fourteen I think? Yikes.)
> 
> Which is to say, Constance probably married in her twenties, Fleur was indeed a bit young to be married off (but the Butcher of Montmartre had a prosperous business of his own, there's that) and Aramis and Isabelle's liaison was both technically legal and a bit, _but are you kidding me?!_
> 
> With regards to young people joining the army, on the other hand, in book canon Athos' 'ward' was considered fit for going to war (in the fighting, not just camp support) at the age of fifteen.
> 
> Shrug. I don't think Athos quite thought Aramis capable of adulting when he was in his mid-twenties. At sixteen? Ha!


	13. "Who needs to remember this?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lucky chapter thirteen. ^_^

“You have no poetry in your soul, d’Artagnan, that’s your trouble.”

“You still get the details wrong,” d’Artagnan grumbled, hunching over a little book of Tacitus he’d been ordered to read for educational reasons. The print was very fine, and the candle in the nearby sconce flickered irritably.

Across the room, Aramis sat with his legs tucked up like a tailor in his chair and frowned over Porthos’ chessboard. He moved a pawn. “We don’t all have the luxury of learning _Lancelot and Guinevere_ at our mother’s knee, my little Gascon.” He sighed when Porthos shifted one of his rooks forward. “I thought I was good at this.”

“You’re not bad,” the big man rumbled. “I’m just better.” Aramis flashed a bright smile. “You played with... her?”

“Mmmm, no,” answered Aramis, scratching the stubble on his throat. “Mostly on quiet evenings we talked shop.”

Athos looked up from reports forwarded from the regiment and shared a look with d’Artagnan of mutual horror at what ‘talking shop’ might have entailed.

“Sometimes I entertained the maid,” Aramis added. Athos’ eyebrows cranked up, met d’Artagnan’s in sympathy, relaxed when Aramis continued, “with readings of poetry. Like _Lancelot and Guinevere._ And she wasn’t complaining at my literary interpretations, either.”

“Mordred still didn’t get dropped off a bridge,” the boy said, mulish.

“Are you ready to recite chapter three?” Aramis asked silkily.

D’Artagnan snapped the little book shut and narrowed his eyes. “Who needs to remember this by heart, anyway?”

“A soldier doesn’t have the luxury of carting his library around every which way, boy. If it’s in your head it can’t be taken from you.” Aramis caught himself. “Well.” He picked at the cuff of his sleeve and said, “You’ve a better chance of keeping it, any road, wherever the hell you end up.” He shifted a knight into a threatening vantage.

“Aramis,” said Athos gently, “maybe let the boy be for the rest of the evening.”

Aramis blinked at him. “But there’s light.” He shifted in his seat, his clothing rustling, then nodded. “As you wish, Captain.” He bent his head over the board, took with good grace Porthos’ checkmate, and set up his half of the chessmen again.

“A whole copy of the book to read,” Porthos rumbled in sympathy, “covers and everything.”

 _“And_ a proper candle,” Aramis groused.

“The youth of today…”

D’Artagnan rolled his eyes. Then, “Why is hell cold?” he asked curiously, cocking his head. “You kept saying that before. ‘Cold as hell in winter…’”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” said Aramis, not looking up from the developing game. He scratched his chin then moved a spindly piece. Porthos promptly took one of his with a click. Aramis tutted softly.

“But hellfire, burning perdition and so forth…?” d'Artagnan asked in his warm, low drawl.

Athos held his tongue on commentary on Dante’s _Inferno_ and what the man had written of the frozen lake at the bottom which held the devil trapped. He had accounts and supply to wrestle, not as dashing as battle plans, or as scholarly as old Tacitus, but at least as necessary. Besides, when Aramis chose to expound on literature or religion he made his commentary florid and entertaining.

But instead, “It just is. It's cold and it's dark, with only whom you loathe to speak to.” Aramis moved another piece, saw the array Porthos had made against him, and sighed.

“Take your time,” said Porthos, grinning. Aramis frowned ferociously at the board.

“Does it snow in hell, then?”

“Only a little,” Aramis answered absently, moving another piece. “The grate is too small.”

Athos’ head snapped up. He looked at them, around the table - Aramis tucked like a spider in his chair, intent on the board; d'Artagnan leaning against the wall nearby with a book forgotten in one hand, looking startled; Porthos frowning. Their eyes met over Aramis’ head. Athos motioned d'Artagnan to continue as Porthos moved one of his pieces.

D'Artagnan said, carefully, “This grate is… how high, exactly?”

“Perhaps twenty feet. Like the cone of a bread oven. Oh, now you're just playing with me, big man,” he said, studying the board.

“I don't want you to lose your wind halfway through,” Porthos answered lightly. “Pacing is everything.”

“My pacing is excellent,” said Aramis in mock outrage, “I could produce many testimonials on my behalf.”

“Aramis. Who is with you?”

“The devil, of course. It's hell. Garrulous old goat. He speaks of the kingdoms of the world. Scripture.” He moved a piece and waved a careless hand. “Things.”

“What else?”

Aramis muttered something in Italian. Porthos and Athos looked at d'Artagnan, who softly translated, “‘Get up, Aramis. Walk, Aramis. Move or die, boy...’ Aramis, why would you die?”

“Because it's cold,” answered Aramis, taking a black knight with one of his bishops, “and we don't want to freeze. Keep up.” He pretended not to notice Porthos sneaking one of his rooks back on the board.

Athos cleared his throat, and asked, “Aramis. What scripture?”

Aramis stopped, hardly breathing, black eyes looking at nothing but the plaster wall of their cozy inn room. After a time, he rubbed his chin and said “... _Lambuerint aquas sicut solent canes lambere.”_

He glanced at the knight and bishop in his hand and said, “These should be pebbles, I think.” He tossed them lightly in his palm. “I thank you for the game,” he said softly to no-one in particular, “but I'm done for the night.” He dropped the pieces on the chequered board, tipped his king on its side, and unfolded himself from his chair.

D’Artagnan opened his mouth.

“No!” whispered Aramis hoarsely. And, _“Please.”_ He vanished out the door.

“I'll go,” said Porthos, rising.

D'Artagnan looked at Athos, frowning. “My Latin isn't good. What's _lambe_ -whatsit?”

Athos looked after them, troubled. “‘Lap as the dog laps.’”

“That,” he hesitated, “that doesn’t sound good.”

“Mn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Um, sorry if that was a bit doomy. (On the plus side, I now have a little black cat in my house, and an even littler black kitten, who looked at each other for about a second before realising that _actually_ they were long-lost sisters reunited, and who spend half their time tumbling over each other and the other half draping themselves in languor across my legs as I write, and all in all it’s very luxurious knowing I can pet a kitten _any time I want,_ so life is good right now.)
> 
> // _And she wasn’t complaining at my literary interpretations, either._ \- Kitty complained about a lot of things, but this is actually true. cf. “A Tale Were I To Unfold” for an example of their storytelling. (D’Artagnan mentions his knowledge of _Lancelot and Guinevere_ in the epilogue of “The Kindness of Strangers”, if you’re interested.)
> 
> // _“You kept saying that before. ‘Cold as hell in winter…’”_ \- Fun fact, in Spanish, the words for ‘winter’ and ‘hell’ have only one letter’s difference between them. I didn’t know that when I started seeding the phrase into Aramis’ dialogue, though. One of those lucky accidents.


	14. "Graven in my bones."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this makes sense.

Porthos stepped into the dark innyard.

It was quiet, as such places go - a whickering from a sleepless horse in the thatched stable, a sliding scrabble as a spotted tomcat mistimed its leap from one roof to another and grimly clawed for purchase. It glanced at Porthos briefly, its eyes iridescent in a flare of torchlight with a grey rat still twitching in its mouth, before trotting off along a guttering, tail high.

He took another step, feeling a loose cobble shift under his boot, and the sharp _zing_ of a shot sped past his nose, striking sparks in a bit of metalwork in the brick wall. He sighted the other way, directing his attention to a deep pool of shadows.

“Hey.”

Another shot over his shoulder, and he saw the flash of its birthing this time, a flair of light and fire illumining Aramis where he sat with his back to the wall, his face blank as a painted saint’s. “Hey,” said Aramis.

Porthos walked to the far wall and settled against it, feeling the bricks against his shoulder blades. He crossed his arms and said, meditatively, “We, Athos and I, we thought that ‘hell in winter’ line was you punning.”

 _”¿Infierno y invierno?”_ Aramis asked lightly. “So did I.” From the sound of it, he was loading his dainty little pistol again. “I don’t always really know how I know things. Who first taught me to fire a gun? I don’t know. But the way of it is graven in my bones now.”

Another shot, landing over Porthos’ head this time. There was hardly any powder behind it, and the spent ball did not ricochet but tumbled sluggishly down the bricks. “D’you want us to stop poking?” Porthos asked, reaching behind him to catch it in his fingers.

A rustle of fabric that might be a shrug from where Aramis sat on the ground. “Everything has to come out sooner or later.”

“Do you want us to stop?”

Rustle. The slide of a ramrod down the barrel of a pistol. “In Madrid there was an atelier I strayed through for - it doesn’t matter why - where they, the glassmaker and his wife, were repairing a broken window. Coloured glass in pieces, all of them sharp enough to make you bleed, and in a few small places you could see where they came together to make this, this brilliant rose. I wish I could have shown you, Porthos, it was so beautiful.” 

_Zing._ A scrap of broken brick bounced off Porthos’ cheek.

“Sometimes I fit the pieces together wrong, that’s all. Or I misplace the context. I mean,” Aramis reached for another lead ball, “standing witness at Athos’ funeral had to have been a dream born of worry, yes?”

“Eh.” Porthos rubbed the back of his neck. “That part actually happened.”

Aramis hooted with laughter. “Does nobody around here have the decency to stay chastely in their graves?”

“You aren’t dead, Aramis.”

“Oh, _I_ know.” But his voice didn’t sound like he believed it. “Can I ask, big man, about another broken piece? Bodies of soldiers lying in white, with all the fir trees dark around. Lime dust or...”

It was like rocks in Porthos’ chest, coming up through his throat. “Snow. Snow on the French-Savoy border, just on Easter Mass. Must be seven or eight years gone, now.”

Rustle. A scrape of metal on stone. “I thought I was dreaming of something else,” he heard Aramis say, very softly. “Every breath a blasphemy.” And, _”Fuck.”_

“Don’t,” said Porthos, low and fierce, “don’t you _dare_ apologise for the fuss again.”

“As you like,” said Aramis indifferently.

“How long you been dreaming of ‘hell’, Aramis?”

Another shot. Another.

“Is this why -” Porthos broke off and reworked the question, softened it. “You’ve been drilling d’Artagnan hard on those books in your head.”

Aramis reloaded his little gun. “That I have. I should ap-”

“It’s good to see the boy sweat, every now and then. He’s been having it too easy with his sword fighting. Getting cocky.”

“We can’t have that,” Aramis agreed, voice lightening. “Did he ever get his message? From his wife.” Silence. “Porthos?”

“She can tell him her own self,” Porthos growled at last. “She’s capable.” He sighed and stamped his feet. “She said she was proud of you.”

A pause. “Then I am blessed,” Aramis said politely.

“You want to know how we met her? This was d’Artagnan’s first day and he came storming in to kill Athos -”

“As one does.”

“As one does, and this pretty _bourgeois_ woman came storming in right after as terrible as an army with banners and ordered us to stand down. Which we did. Athos even apologised.”

“I like her already.”

“‘Him I’m not so sure about; her I like,’ is what you said.”

Aramis laughed. “A pithy turn of phrase. What else?” 

They talked easily for half an hour, of the fierce and kind Madame d’Artagnan, and other old friends, and the simple mundanities of garrison life before the war, and in time Aramis stepped out of the shadows, brushing his clothes straight.

“Eh, Porthos?” he asked, as they walked inside. “What do you need?”

“Y’know, I don't think anyone's ever asked me that.” Porthos considered, and said, “Respect. I crave respect like water in the dry land.”

Aramis nodded.

“You?”

“Mmm, trust, I suppose.” A great yawn took Aramis then, and he stretched into it like a sleepy cat. “Get to bed,” Porthos ordered him. “It’s been a long night.”

Aramis smiled crookedly. “As you wish.”

**

He was gone in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, sorry.
> 
>  _”¿Infierno y invierno?”_ \- ‘Hell and winter?’ in Spanish, if the Google Translate doesn’t fail me.


End file.
